This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The following abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined as follows:                3GPP third generation partnership project        A/N, ACK/NACK acknowledgement/negative acknowledgement        CA carrier aggregation        CoMP coordinated multi-point        CQI channel quality indicator        CSI channel state information        dB decibels        DL downlink        eICIC enhanced interference control interference coordination        EIRP effective isotropic radiated power        eNB or eNodeB base station, evolved Node B        LTE long term evolution        FDD frequency division duplexing        HARQ hybrid automatic repeat request        LTE long term evolution        LTE-A long term evolution—advanced        NDI new data indicator        MAC medium access control        MCS modulation and coding scheme        MME mobility management entity        PDCCH physical downlink control        PMI precoding matrix indicator        PRB physical resource block        PTI precoding type indicator        PUCCH physical uplink control channel        PUSCH physical uplink shared channel        RAN radio access network        Rel release        RI Rank Indicator        RRC radio resource control        SGW serving gateway        SI study item        TS technical specification        Tx transmission        TTI transmission time interval        UE user equipment        UL uplink        UL-SCH uplink shared channel        
Releases of certain communication systems are referenced below. A short description of these releases is now presented. The specification of a communication system known as evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN, also referred to as UTRAN-LTE, universal terrestrial radio access network-long term evolution, or as E-UTRA) is currently nearing completion within the 3GPP (third generation partnership project). One specification of interest is 3GPP TS (technical standard) 36.300, V8.12.0 (April 2010), “3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E UTRA) and Evolved Universal Terrestrial Access Network (E-UTRAN); Overall description; Stage 2 (Release 8)”. This system may be referred to, for convenience, as LTE Rel-8 (which also contains 3G HSPA, third generation high speed packet access, and its improvements). In general, the set of specifications given generally as 3GPP TS 36.xyz (e.g., 36.211, 36.311, 36.312, etc.) may be seen as describing the Release 8 LTE system. Release 9 (Rel-9) versions of these specifications have also been published, including 3GPP TS 36.300, V9.7.0 (March 2011). Release 10 (Rel-10) versions of these specifications have additionally been published, including 3GPP TS 36.300, V10.4.0 (June 2011).
There is a new study item (SI) proposal in RP-111359, “LTE Coverage Enhancements”, 3GPP TSG RAN #53 (13-16 Sep. 2011) (a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, which forms part of this disclosure), which concerns LTE coverage enhancements. The SI was approved in RAN#53. The goal of the SI is for example “to identify any potential issues due to coverage bottlenecks by taking coverage imbalances into account, for example between control and data channels, uplink and downlink, or initial access and data transmission”.
There are coverage bottlenecks that are identified and can be improved.